HOUSTON – Conversations between Troy Snitker and Alex Cintron have gotten confusing. The Houston Astros‘ two hitting coaches oversee an offense that boasts the highest batting average in baseball and has accumulated more hits than any team in the American League. No lineup in the sport strikes out less often and only three have a higher slugging percentage.
“Troy and I talked about this: It seems like we’re one of the worst hitting teams in the Major Leagues because of the record we have and how we’ve been playing,” Cintrón said Sunday.
Offense isn’t the reason the Astros are two games under .500. Pitching injuries and poor roster construction are of much greater concern. Masking both weaknesses seems impossible, but the Astros lineup must try.
Houston’s pitching woes aren’t going away anytime soon, magnifying the production of an offense that has grown impatient. The personnel change should have heralded a slight change in swing decisions and plate discipline, but the first 78 games of this season demonstrate something more drastic.
“Our entire offense needs to throw more throws,” third baseman Alex Bregman said. “We swing too much.”
Four other lineups swing more than Houston’s, but none see fewer pitches per plate appearance, an aggressive approach that has become a trademark of the Astros’ golden era. The 2022 World Series champions also saw the fewest pitches per plate appearance of any lineup in the sport. Last season, only two offenses saw less than the Astros.
Trends in Astros plate discipline
Season | Swing% | BED AND BREAKFAST% | Plots by PA | Pursuit rate |
---|---|---|---|---|
2021 | 45.40 | 9.00 | 3.9 | 25.70% |
2022 | 48.00 | 8.70 | 3.78 | 29.20% |
2023 | 48.10 | 8.80 | 3.82 | 30% |
2024 | 49.60 | 7.30 | 3.66 | 31.50% |
Aggressiveness is acceptable when pitch selection is accurate and plate discipline is maintained. For most of the last six seasons, the Astros managed that. The seventh has featured more inconsistencies, deviating from some of the characteristics that Houston’s lineup has long been praised for.
A day after Chicago White Sox rookie starter Jonathan Cannon recorded 26 outs in 106 pitches against the Houston lineup, general manager Dana Brown lamented on the team’s main radio station about his inability. club to “accept more pitches.” This week, Snitker and Cintron acknowledged that patience has become more of a theme in hitters’ meetings.
“We have this almost perfect storm where every hitter is similar,” center fielder Jake Meyers said. “I’m not saying all hitters are the same. But in terms of how we approach batting, we all seem to be pretty aggressive.”
Twenty-seven qualified hitters have a swing rate of at least 52 percent. Three of them are regular players in the Astros lineup: José Altuve, Yainer Díaz and Jeremy Peña. Mauricio Dubón, who has started Houston’s last 14 games, swings 60.9 percent of the time.
Neither Dubón nor Díaz were ordinary players last season. Inserting them into more prominent roles has produced obvious results. Relying on Pena to hit higher up the batting order has magnified some of his aggressiveness. Michael Brantley’s retirement robbed the lineup of a master of pitch selection and plate discipline.
“We would love for the boys to be more passive and walk more,” Cintrón said.
Four lineups draw fewer walks than the Astros, whose 7.3 percent walk rate would be the lowest in any full season since 2013.
Only two teams chase outside the strike zone more frequently, perhaps the most concerning number of some downward trends. The reliance on more unproven hitters has inflated the number, but the unusual zone expansion of Altuve and Yordan Álvarez is exacerbating the problem.
José Altuve has struck out at a higher rate this season. (Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via /Keynote USA/Getty Images)
Altuve has now struck out 65 times in 342 plate appearances. Two years ago, in his last full season, Altuve struck out 87 times in 604 plate appearances.
Altuve’s chase rate has increased to 38.8 percent (seven points higher than his career average) but more concerning is his declining ability to make contact with pitches outside the zone. Altuve, one of the best bad hitters in baseball, hits only 62.6 percent of the pitches he chases. His career average is 71.5 percent.
“Approach-wise and mechanically, we had some guys lost up and down (in the lineup), and that makes you chase a lot,” Cintrón said. “We are trying to be aggressive to avoid two strikes. We are trying to put the ball in play.
“A lot of our hitters, when they’re in trouble, come out at low velocity with a lot of ground balls, a lot of swings and misses. Late in the heater because they are not in a good position and they do not want to be late, disconnected, the hands cannot go to the ball and they cannot move.”
Álvarez, Peña, Díaz and Bregman have endured poor stretches and deviated from their mechanics during Houston’s uneven start. The coaches noticed that Álvarez was much more aggressive in 0-0 counts. His chase rate skyrocketed because of that. The same was true for the Bregman oscillation rate, which was as high as 45 percent. Five of his six 162-game seasons ended with a swing rate below 40 percent.
“When I see the ball well, I only swing at the pitches I want to swing at. At the beginning of the year, I feel like I was putting a lot of pitches in play that I normally wouldn’t throw that were borderline,” Bregman said.
“In general, everything looks good when the mechanics aren’t good, so you swing with everything, whereas in the past, when the mechanics didn’t feel good, I was super selective. I like where I am now for the last month. But before that, I threw too many pitches and I need to reduce my swing rate.”
Peña and Díaz have shown that they are free and aggressive with fastballs in the early count. They can be fooled by pitches that look like they came straight out of a pitcher’s hand, which led Cintrón to implore a strategy.
“We have to start telling them every day, ‘Try to hit a ground ball to first base, between first and second,’ so they let the ball go deeper because they want to hit the fastball in front,” Cintrón said.
“That’s how they’ve been taught in the past: be aggressive with the fastball up the middle, which is true. That’s why they’ve been really aggressive. … We have to let them know that they have to use the first or second base hole, so if you get a slider or a curveball, you still have a chance to put the ball in play.”
Houston’s lineup puts into play 30.9 percent of the strikes it sees. No other crime does it more. Only three lineups in the sport have a higher overall contact rate. The Astros remain the toughest team in the league to strike out, but they rarely put themselves in situations to do so.
No lineup in baseball has seen fewer two-strike counts this season than Houston’s, perhaps because only two swing at the first pitch more often. Meyers, for example, has a first-pitch swing rate of 44.7 percent. Only eight qualified hitters have one higher.
Meyers is in the midst of the best season of his brief major league career. He is one of six qualified Astros with an OPS+ over 100 and one of eight who bats above .250.
Meyers has swung at the first pitch for 98 of his 219 plate appearances. He has a .910 OPS when he does and a .580 OPS when he doesn’t. When Meyers puts the first pitch into play, he is 23-for-50 with nine extra-base hits. Interrupting that success by asking for patience seems dangerous, but it’s a balance Meyers and his teammates must discover.
“Honestly, if the first pitch of every at-bat for 27 consecutive at-bats is right up the middle, then I hope everyone swings at 27 pitches, but it’s just not realistic,” Bregman said. “We strike out the least (of any lineup), so I feel like we should know that and not swing as much.”
(Top photo of Jeremy Peña after a strikeout this season: Steph Chambers//Keynote USA/Getty Images)
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